A Project Report On

“Social Media Marketing”

In Partial Fulfilment of the Award of
Degree of Master of Business Administration
(2018 – 2020)

Varsha
18001701058
 COMPANY PROFILE

KwalityBazaar.com is an independent online store, a one stop

shop solution for fresh and hygienic fruits and vegetables. It is
NCR’s first branded online vegetable, fruits platform launched in
the year 2013. It brings first time the concept of providing fresh
ozone purified fruits, vegetables with Brand "GREENO" at door
step in NCR. It is also an initiative by IIM alumnus as a part of IIM’s
CSR.

DECLARATION BY AUTHOR
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This is to declare that this report has been written by me the
author. No part of the report is plagiarized from other sources. All
information included from other sources has been duly
acknowledged. I aver that if any part of the report is found to be
plagiarized, I shall take full responsibility for it.

VARSHA

AKNOWLEDGEMENT

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I have taken efforts in this project. However, it would not have
been possible without the kind support and help of many
individuals and organizations. I would like to extend my sincere
thanks to all of them. I am highly indebted to Mr. Vikram Arora for
their guidance and constant supervision as well as for providing
necessary information regarding the project & also for their
support in completing the project. I would like to express my
gratitude towards my faculty guide Dr. Renita Dubey & member of
Kwalitybazaar.com for their kind co-operation and
encouragement which help me in completion of this project. I
would like to express my special gratitude and thanks to industry
persons for giving me such attention and time. My thanks and
appreciations also go to my colleague in developing the project
and people who have willingly helped me out with their abilities.

ABSTRACT

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Introduction: Social media has gained importance and acceptance
at a very past pace. It has become an avenue to share one’s
personal and professional life. The usage of social media as a
marketing tool is already implemented by many businesses. This
reports analysed how effectively social media be used as a
marketing tool. The comparison of social media versus traditional
media for marketing was studied and advantages and
disadvantages of both are compiled. This report also analysed
how small business start-ups can benefit from the ever growing
social media industry.
Method: This report used journals, magazine articles, newspaper
articles, business reviews, online survey and so on from the library
of Amity University. Further official social media pages of various
companies on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were analysed to
generate statistics.
Result: Social media presence is definitely an advantage for all
kinds of businesses. Social media marketing has wider market
appeal and is relatively cheaper than traditional advertisements.
With a huge number of audiences and high customisability of
social media for required content, social media marketing
emerges as an exciting and effective tool for marketing.

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 CHAPTER – 1

INTRODUCTION

Social Networking sites have taken over today’s world. From what was
started merely for entertainment, today these websites provide a host of
opportunities to its users ranging from marketing their products,

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increasing awareness on social issues, sharing photos, video calls, joining
groups and forums of interests, promoting an idea, finding family roots,
finding a lost friend, gaming, entertainment applications and so on. In fact
the usage of social networking sites has been so diverse that many people
use it for more than just entertainment. Mena et al (2012) studied the
readiness of health students to use Facebook as a platform for training
professional habits particularly in the case of influenza vaccination. This
clearly shows social networking sites serve as a creative solution to many
business problems.

1.1 OVERALL AIM

Marketing is of core importance to any kind of business. It can range from

promotions and advertisements on a large scale to one to one word of
mouth marketing. Marketing forms the essence of a business by which the
brand name is reached to the intended audience. The cost associated with
traditional marketing techniques including print and visual media is
increasing at a fast pace. The cost of a full page colour advertisement in
‘Time of India’ is around₹200,000, if not more. Thus it is important to look
out for new and more creative methods of marketing. Online marketing
especially social media marketing is a sensible alternative.

This report tries to analyse how effective is marketing via social media. The
report also compares and contrasts the advantages and disadvantages of
social media marketing with traditional advertising like print and visual
media. Today’s youngsters are aspirers. They dream big and want to be
their own boss. Most of them aspire to be entrepreneurs and the success
stories of entrepreneurs are a huge encouragement for them. A major

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problem that these entrepreneurs face while starting a new business is the
cost associated with the brand building and marketing. In this era, though
the young population is all set to take over the world with extended
technological advancements, many of them fail due to lack of financial
resources for brand building. It is in this scenario that this report analyses
how well social media marketing can help new businesses.

Therefore the objectives of this report are as follows:

 To study the effectiveness and implementation of social media

marketing for different businesses

1.2 METHOD
This report uses academic journals, magazine articles, live survey and
newspaper articles which gives an idea about the relevance of social media
as a marketing tool. These were accessed via the library of Amity
University. The search keys given were ‘social media’, ‘marketing through
Facebook’, ’Start-ups and social media’ ‘Facebook marketing’ ‘Twitter
marketing’, ‘LinkedIn marketing’ ‘social media marketing’ and so on.
Various social networking websites were also visited to get insights on how
marketing can be done through them. Also, in order to get ideas on how
new business start-ups are using social media for marketing success stories
of some entrepreneurs who recently started their business were read.

The structure of this project report is as follows. Chapter 2 does a literature

review on the topics social media as a marketing tool for B2B markets,
social media as a marketing tool for B2C markets and using Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn for marketing. Chapter 3 is a critical evaluation of
these literatures studied and discusses pros and cones of social media
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marketing as compared to traditional marketing. It also includes the
findings which came to light as a result of the interaction with the
Marketing manager of Kwalitybazaar.com. Chapter 4 concludes the report
by stating the effectiveness of social media for marketing. It also gives
recommendations to owners of new start-up businesses on how to manage
their social media accounts to generate more profits from their businesses.

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 CHAPTER – 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Social media has taken over the world in every sense. In the field of
marketing, advertising, brand building, promotions social media is the
most sought after method adopted by entrepreneurs’ young and old. The

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word social media brings to mind the most used networking sites like
Facebook, Twitter and Linked In though there are other social media
websites such as MySpace, Flicker and YouTube. Social media is widely
used in various businesses like small business, banking, retail marketing,
B2B marketing, travel and tourism marketing, financial institutions
marketing and so on. This chapter aims to throw light on the way in which
social marketing can be used effectively for business development. The
initial part of this chapter will give an overview of how social media as a
whole can help promote businesses and further down the report, specific
cases pertaining to a particular social networking website used for
developing a particular business unit will be examined.

2.1 IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN TODAY’S WORLD

Marie Swift (2006) suggests that placing an advertisement in the print

media is not the best solution for brand promotion. The problem with
traditional mass advertising according to Marie is that, these media appeal
to a wide range of people who may not even be interested to know who
we are. On the other hand, promotions and brand building must be done
with people whom we think are potential customers for our business. This
can be achieved by channelizing a greater part of promotion and
advertising budget for activities such as networking, volunteering, hosting
events and so on. Out of these methods, networking is the best that suits
the need of the time (Marie Swift, 2006). With the technological
advancements in today’s world, it is fairly easy to be connected with the
outside world with the help of social networking sites. Peer networking is
an important way of advertising and this is all set to take over the world of
marketing in the near future. The biggest advantage of social media
marketing is that it can be used for any kind of business regardless of

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whether it is B2B or B2C. Also the relative cost is much lesser as compared
with traditional advertising.

2.2 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TO BUSINESS MARKETING

Michael Rodriguez et al (2012) conducted a study on the effectiveness of

social media marketing by analysing 1699 business to business clients from
around 25 industries. The study proves that social media is indeed helpful
for B2B firms in generating new sales. Social media is the best tool for
finding new clients and deepening the relationship with existing
customers. The study assumed five hypotheses as follows: Social media
usage creates opportunity, social media usage helps in understanding
customers, social media usage helps in relationship management, social
media usage aids in relationship sales performance and social media usage
helps in outcome based sales performance. Based on the social capital
theory, these hypotheses were tested and data obtained was analysed
using the standard protocol (Churchill 1979; Churchill and Peter 1984). The
result of this analysis supported the hypotheses that social media usage
creates opportunities, social media usage helps in relationship
management and social media usage helps in relationship sales
performance. However, the hypotheses that social media usage helps
increase outcome based sales performance and social media usage helps
in understanding customers were not supported. Thus taking all these into
consideration, it can be concluded that social media usage helps in
developing B2B sales. With over 955 million active users, Facebook tops
the social media in terms of usage and number of active users (Mashable
website, 2013). Thus it is important to know how Facebook can be used
for B2B marketing.

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2.2.1 FACEBOOK FOR B2B MARKETING
Although the idea of integrating business into personal life doesn’t seem
to be a right choice, Facebook being a larger community than all countries
of this world expect India and China can help develop B2B business
(Handley, 2013). For this the company must have a business page as
opposed to the normal individual profile page. The following things need
to be kept in mind while promoting business through Facebook:

(1) The utmost important thing is to get as many people to ‘like’ the
official company page. Also contents must be added frequently so that
users constantly get the news of the company through the news feed on
their home page. This will keep them updated about what is going on in
the company.

(2) Secondly communicate to the customers visually as opposed to text

only communication. Facebook uses an algorithm which gives more
priority to videos and photos than text and increases visibility of news
item proportional to the number of people commenting or liking on it. In
simple terms, if a news item is liked and commented by a few people in
the initial phase, there is more chance that it will be seen by more people.

(3) The number of times updates are added and the time of the day when
the posts are added is equally important. Choose a time which is most
likely to hit maximum number of clicks and limit the number of posts to
one or two per day.

Similar to the usage of social media in B2B markets as mentioned above,

social media also aids B2C marketing. The following part of this report
analyses how various B2C clients are benefitted from social media usage.

2.3 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TO CONSUMER MARKETING

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Social media can be effectively used for various B2C clients to increase
sales. This includes business markets such as travel and tourism, banks,
retail outlets and so on.

2.3.1 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR TRAVEL AND TOURISM

Various industries within the travel industry are focusing on social media
marketing along with the traditional marketing techniques. The airline
industry is one which heavily relies on social media for promotions and
advertisements. Hvass & Munar (2012) studied the effectiveness of the
airline industry using social media for promoting their travel and tourism
packages. Initially a total of 29 full service carriers and 20 low cost carriers
were selected for this study and afterwards three airlines were chosen
from this set. These airlines had an account in Facebook or Twitter or
both.

The study proves that most airlines use an official tone/language while
posting their updates thereby reducing the interactive nature of the post
(Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil et al 2011). Followers would like the content of
these pages to be more informal but authentic. In fact many airlines have
more than one official page which can cause both confusion and clarity. It
causes confusion because fans or followers may be reluctant to join more
than one page for the same company as it would be difficult to distinguish
between original official page and duplicate page.

On the other hand maintaining more than one official page on the social
media can help to clearly distinguish between various functionalities of the
company. For instance, content pertaining to employees need not be
made public to the customers and so two pages can be maintained which
caters to employees and customers. In any case, the result proves that
maintaining a social media account helps increase customer base for the

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travel and tourism industry and as mentioned above many companies in
the tourism industry are already into it.

2.3.1.1 TWITTER FOR THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY

Saltzman (2009) conducted a real life case study on usage of Twitter by

various travel operators. It is interesting to note that different travel
agents use different strategies for marketing through twitter. While
Southwest airlines do not address most of customer service issues through
twitter, it responds to all other queries including latest fares, promotions
offers and so on. As for Marriot International which started with relatively
less number of followers, the main agenda was to implement the feedback
provided by the followers. The main success factor of Marriot’s page is
that they don’t limit their tweets to company specific deals and offers.
Interesting fun facts are also given due importance. Though Marriot also
doesn’t encourage customer service issues through Twitter as it may
damage the reputation of the company, any issues posted on Twitter are
dealt with.

For pleasant holidays, the major reason they use Twitter is to

communicate last minute deals to its customers and other travel agents.
Carnival Cruise Lines address customer queries most effectively so that
Twitter is more of a communication medium between the company and
the customers. Thus different strategies are adopted by different travel
operators for marketing through twitter. This strategy has proved
successful for all the travel agents because their growth in terms of

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number of followers is whooping. All of them have grown to either three
digit or four digit numbers in a short span of five years and this proves that
marketing through twitter is successful. Though the real success factor lies
in the amount of revenue generated through usage of social media, the
gain in popularity of these sites can’t be ignored. Table 1 shows the
growth of various travel operators in terms of number of followers.

TRAVEL OPERATOR FOLLOWERS (AS ON AUG 2007)

FOLLOWERS (AS ON 27 SEP 2012)
PERCENTAGE GROWTH
Southwest Airlines 406,091 1,372,970 338% Marriot International 13,446
197,089 1465% Carnival Cruise Lines 8,671 60,556 698% Fairmount Hotels
4,550 42,033 923% Pleasant Holidays 2,767 7,727 279% Holland America
Line 1,472 15,617 1060% Four Seasons Hotels 4,157 49,251 1184%

Another area of wide usage of social media for B2C marketing is in

financial institutions especially in the banking segment. The next part of
this report concentrates on how financial institutions utilize social media
for their marketing strategies.

2.3.2 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Many studies have been conducted to analyse the importance of social

media marketing in the financial institution segment. The use of Linked In
which is referred to as ‘professional Facebook’ is a very effective platform
to build business. “LinkedIn provides a prime opportunity to showcase

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your business and its employees as experts in their field” (Hershberger,
2013). An important fact about LinkedIn is that it has the highest average
income of all social sites. This means that LinkedIn is more to do with
business than entertainment. These days business validation is done by
searching for the company in most popular social media. If financial
institutions do not have a profile, it is most likely that the company will not
be regarded as authentic. The advantages of managing a profile on
LinkedIn are as follows:

 The company website, other social media presence like Facebook

and Twitter can be integrated with the LinkedIn page.
 Products and Services tab on the LinkedIn page can be customised
to suit the company’s requirements.
 Icons, Banners, Photos and videos pertaining to brand building of
the company can be included on the LinkedIn page to increase
viewership of the page.

Several real life case studies have been written about how banks in
particular use other social media sites such as Facebook and twitter for
marketing. The next part focusses on banks using Facebook as a marketing
tool.

2.3.2.1 FACEBOOK FOR BANK MARKETING

According to Price (2011), customers who interact with a company

through social media are not discount shoppers. Financial institutions like
banks use Facebook as a tool to deepen existing potential customers.

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Evidently Facebook is a place where people like to spent time in. When a
company’s presence is felt on a place where you want to be, there are
more chances that the company’s brand building boosts up as a by-
product of the liking for the social media website as a whole. Bank Atlantic
is an example which has 2217 likes as on 26 September 2012. The
following is the strategy implemented by Bank Atlantic:

 Use Facebook to create experiences, services and values unique to

Facebook users. This can be surveys, games and so on .
 Place interactive contents like videos and photos which will drive
the customers towards the bank’s official pages .
 Encourage users who are active on the page by promoting their
content like blogs.

Just as different tour operators have different marketing strategies on

twitter, different banks have different marketing strategy on Facebook as
well. Albro (2012) reports the strategies used by various banks in the
United States of America to increase their sales through Facebook
marketing. For First National Bank operating mainly in Virginia, Facebook is
an important way of keeping in touch with the customers.

The posts on the bank’s page are planned well in advance so that the bank
is prepared to counter any queries from customers regarding the posts.
The bank dedicates a person for responding to customer queries on the
page. Similarly Bath Savings Institution believes in a two way
synchronisation between the banks official website and the official

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Facebook page. While updates are posted on both the website and on the
Facebook page, the bank aims at creating an interaction with the
customers through the Facebook page. An important aspect of Bath
Savings Institution is that it does not discuss products or services of the
bank through Facebook. The bank believes that details of products or
services are not what customers want. Just as banks use Facebook for
marketing, Twitter is also widely used by many banks to promote their
brand. The next part of the report throws light on Twitter marketing by
banks.

2.3.2.2 TWITTER FOR BANK MARKETING

A difference in using Twitter for marketing as compared to Facebook or

LinkedIn is that Twitter is more demanding. Frequent tweets should be
written in order to engage customers and this may require an additional
person in marketing to keep the page live and updated at all times (Walt
Albro, 2012). Also even if multiple tweets are written, the number of
potential customers in Twitter is much less than of Facebook due to fact
that it has far lesser active users than Facebook.

However, many banks have already started using twitter as a means to

communicate with their customers. Baylake Bank has two persons from
the marketing department to work full time for the bank’s social media
presence. Baylake Bank is active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The
advantage that the bank sees in being on Twitter is the nearly real time
conversations it can offer to customers.

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Thus customers receive feedback on their query in a very fast manner. The
content for social media is reviewed every two weeks and approved for
posting. Avidia bank has outsourced its marketing operations through
Twitter since the bank has only a small number of marketing staff. Avidia
bank aims at creating new customers and strengthening its brand name
through Twitter. Interestingly North Jersey Community Bank has about a
dozen twitter accounts. The bank uses one as its official twitter page while
the others are for communication between employees and the bank’s
clients. Thus various banks are utilizing social media for its marketing.

Apart from financial institutions and travel and tourism industries, retailers
are also on the lookout for utilising social media presence for marketing.
The next part of this report gives an idea of how retailers use social media
for marketing.

2.3.3 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR RETAILERS

The August (2009) issue of Market Watch: Technology suggests that usage
of Twitter if monitored well can help in increasing sales revenue beyond
expectations. Many retailers are already reaping the benefits of being on
Twitter. For instance ‘Dell Retail Outlet’ had 704,000 followers on twitter
in 2009 and an accumulated turnover of $2 million through twitter since
the inception of its twitter page in 2007. Today it has 1,506,824 followers
which record a 214% growth in terms of number of followers in a short
span of 3 years. Fashion retailer ASOS is also actively tweeting their offers,
promotions and discounts through twitter. Similarly Fresh and Easy which
is the US subsidiary of Tesco launched a new family meal pack as
suggested by its customers through Twitter. A leading furniture retailer in
the UK – Habitat – cautions that twitter usage, particularly the use of

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hashtags for promotions must be done with extreme care. The company
faced a bad reputation when it used non relevant hashtags to improve
viewership. Thus usage of twitter for retailers is also found useful.

Though the above study proves that social media usage aids in developing
both B2C and B2B businesses, Handley Ann (2012) suggests that using
Facebook for business needs may create a negative impact on the person
trying to promote the business. She suggests that Facebook is something
personal and people don’t expect business deals through Facebook. It is
supposed to be a social networking site meant for making friends and
keeping in touch with existing friends.

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 CHAPTER – 3

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

It is clear from the literature review that usage of social media for
marketing has been embraced by businesses of all kinds. It is proved that
business to business marketing and business to consumer marketing is
possible and highly effective through the usage of social media especially
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Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The next part of the report concentrates
on how social media presence can be increased for business firms and how
is it better than or worse than traditional advertising techniques. It also
focusses on how social media usage can enhance small businesses. Merely
implementation of social media may not be useful for businesses but there
should be a way to measure the impact of using social media for
marketing. Thus discussion on how to measure the return on investment
in social media will also be covered. In addition to this the general thumb
rules of using social media sites for marketing will be discussed.

3.1 IMPLEMENTATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Usage of social media helps to create a feeling for the customers that they
have a direct and immediate access to the company (Rodriguez et al,
2012). It is more of a pull strategy rather than a push strategy for business
development as proposed by Lager (2009). An important aspect of social
media marketing is that the results of social media marketing will be
known only after some time of implementation. Merely setting up a page
on any social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn is not
enough to generate sales.

The most important part of implementation is that it should regularly and

frequently be updated. Twitter in particular which is more of real time
status updates, requires frequent updating and feedback to queries. At the
same time, too many posts should not be posted since it will damage the
reputation of the brand and over populate the customer home page.
There are different tactics for implementing pages on different social
media sites as follows:

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 3.1.1 IMPLEMENTING FACEBOOK
There are several things to keep in mind before plunging into the world of
Facebook marketing. Facebook is not the ideal place for marketing all
kinds of businesses. A firm’s objectives should be laid down and it should
completely match with the Facebook marketing style (Maxwell 2012). This
means that Facebook marketing should completely fit with the brand
being marketed. Keeping in mind the fact that average age of people using
Facebook rose from 33 to 38 in 2011 (Maxwell 2012), a brand which caters
to audience in their late thirties can easily be marketed using Facebook.
Once the brand is recognised to be good enough for Facebook marketing,
the next hurdle is to urge people to ‘like’ your page.

For this interactive and interesting content should be shared on a regular

basis. The next step is to engage the people who have liked your page by
providing them unique deals through Facebook. Having done this,
integrating the company official website, other social media pages such as
Twitter and LinkedIn pages with the company’s official Facebook page is
the next important thing. These icons must be placed promptly, in a place
which is visible to all visitors easily and there should be easy navigation
between these pages (Maxwell 2012).

Status updates, videos, photos, creative games and so on must be updated

at steady pace of intervals so that viewers never think that the company’s
page is not maintained well. On the other hand, do not overload the
customers with too many posts. One post everyday will be most rewarding
as people won’t get bored seeing the firm’s page. There should be
someone responsible for keeping the page live and active throughout the
year, every year. There are various methods for this.

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 The easiest is to delegate the work for the marketing department. But
another solution to decrease workload and to increase creativity of the
posts is to circulate the responsibility of posting with the various
departments such as HR, Finance and accounts department. This can be
done since Facebook is very popular and does not require any technical
expertise to update posts. Another method is outsourcing and there are
many companies which outsource social media marketing. Collecting
feedback from the customers and implementing them in the business is
very important since they are invaluable suggestions from people who
want your brand to grow. A legal media policy for data protection should
also be implemented so that the company’s legal side is also taken care of.

3.1.2 IMPLEMENTING TWITTER

As opposed to Facebook, Twitter requires more real time tweets and
hence it is more demanding. There should be a person in charge of
‘tweeting’ the relevant information at the right time (Marketing Magazine,
2012). There are several points to be kept in mind while tweeting:

 Consistently tweet at the peak hour of the day and respond to

queries directly and promptly. Do not tweet too many times in a
day.
 Plan in advance regarding what to post and when to post. Keep the
posts short and interesting.

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  Sharing unique content on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the
company’s website will urge users to follow the company’s page on
all the social media websites.
 Find people who are sharing information related with your business
and engage them in your social media marketing.
 It is important to keep in mind that in order to draw attention from
Facebook or Twitter users who are already busy, engaged and
entertained, the company needs to post something even more
interesting which will increase the company’s sales revenue
indirectly.
 The person who is designated to send tweets must know about the
company well and he/she must be very much aware of the business
language of the firm. Either content should be reviewed before
posting or someone experienced should be given the task of social
media marketing.
 A specific amount of time at regular intervals like morning, midday
and evening should be spent for responding to twitter queries if any.
 Do not just promote the business but promote interesting content
such as funny videos, useful information and so on. All the content
shared should have some relevance with regard to the firm itself.

 Use simple language which can be understood by a common man.

Take special care not to include jargons in tweets.
 Maintain a positive attitude in the tweets and do not get too
personal (Gunelius , 2011)

Having studied how to implement a twitter page and a Facebook page, the
next important thing is to measure the outcome of these efforts. Hence
calculating the return on investment from social media is equally
important.
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3.2 MEASURING THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
When a CFO of a firm looks at cutting down costs, the ones most likely to
get cut are the ones whose ROI is not known. Hence, investment on social
media marketing is likely to get cut and thereby the firm will suffer bad
consequences (Price 2011). Thus it is very important to calculate the ROI
for social media marketing. Follow the steps for the same.

Track the initial numbers- revenue, average customer spending, website

user traffic, new customers and so on. Make a note of the expenses
related to maintaining and updating the social media page and track the
amount of revenue generated from the social media. Subtracting the
expense from the revenue and dividing it with the initial investment will
yield the ROI.

The challenge here is that the expense here will be a measure of time
whereas the revenue generated will be in pounds. This time can be
converted to currency by multiplying the time with the hourly wage and
adding the computer and internet cost to it. After posting regular updates
on the page for a month or so, calculate the increased revenue (Price
2011). Apart from this various tools are available to track users who visit a
page on Facebook just like Google Analytics is used to track people visiting
a website. The tools available in the market are as follows:

i.) Facebook Insights: Gives data on customer interaction, ‘likes’ comments

and so on in a visually pleasing way which is easy to understand and
analyse.

ii.) HootSite: Consists of a web application and a mobile application which

can be used by novice users as well to interpret traffic on a webpage

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 iii.) Nutshellmail: Gives reports on social media usage as an email which
has details like comments, ‘likes’ and so on for Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn.

iv.) TweetDeck: Used to get a peripheral idea on who is using the

company’s twitter page and who is coming back.

Similarly, it is important to measure the impact of using Facebook for bank

marketing. This can be done by monitoring the change in visitors’ number
when a promotion has been updated on its Facebook page and by
measuring customer satisfaction levels from time to time (Price, 2011).
Since the implementation of social media and measuring the impact of
social media is done, the next question is whether social media marketing
is viable for small businesses and new start-ups. The next part of the
report focuses on viability on social media marketing for small businesses
start-ups.

3.3 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SMALL BUSINESS START-UPS

Ankeny (2011) finds out how is it possible for small business start-ups to
utilize Facebook as their marketing tool. There are numerous small
business start-ups which use Facebook as an effective tool for marketing.
The biggest advantage of small business start-ups in using Facebook for
marketing is the massive expense cut. Initial phase of a company is the
time when the brand needs to be built through strong PR events. With
about a billion population and around half of them logging in everyday,
there is no cheaper medium of promotion as Facebook especially for small
business start-ups.

By encouraging people to interact on Facebook by providing unique

promotions, business opportunities and so on, people get more
acquainted with the brand itself. By providing discounts and other offers

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to Facebook customers alone, the need for reviewing the page again and
again becomes a necessity. Hence, the page gets clicked many more times
and thus the brand building takes place without much hassle. When
Facebook page of a new start-up company is being designed, it must be
designed in such a way that it engages more customers. Thus by increasing
the amount of time spent on the Facebook page of the company, the
brand name gets more deeply engraved into the customers mind (Ankeny
2011).

The success of a small business start-up by Anna Strahs proves that

Facebook marketing works really well for new business start-ups (Ankeny,
2011). She started her own bakery which baked alternative food which
was corn free, nut free and diary free. She started a Facebook page as
soon as she started the company and regularly updated photos and videos
of her progress. Facebook managed her market research, feedback
collection and promotions.

While she managed to know what the customers want through Facebook
using customer feedback, she did her promotions by updating posts and
photos through Facebook. By understanding the true potential of
Facebook, she invested in Facebook advertisements as well and the
response was truly rewarding. From what started as a business to cater to
the necessity of people with dietary restrictions, the company has grown
far and wide and ships its products across the United States of America.
This was possible with a mere $300 spent for advertisements. This is the
true potential of social media for new start-ups. At a time when financial
resources are very limited and brand building is of high priority, social
media advertisements can eliminate the huge amount of money spent on
advertisements and at the same time create a brand image in a relatively
shorter span of time.

30
Having studied the way in which social media can be exploited for small
businesses start-ups, the next important thing is to compare and contrast
between traditional advertisements and social media promotions and
conclude which is better and why.

3.4 COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING WITH SOCIAL

MEDIA ADVERTISING
Traditional advertising media includes print media, radio and visual media.
In fact, only the print media was considered to be traditional media but in
this context of discussing the impact of social media advertising and its
comparison with other media advertisements, all other existing media
except the social media is considered as traditional media, at least for the
sake of this report. Though social media is gaining importance and
acceptance, 45% of advertisement revenue is still paid for advertisements
in the print media Hampel (2012).

This figure can be debated to be a result of the inexpensive social media

advertisements as mentioned earlier. Though the investment for
advertising in social media is very less, the mass appeal is much higher and
hence more returns can be expected. Hampel (2012) identifies that

31
“consumers are becoming increasingly resistant to traditional advertising”
(Pieters and Wedel, 2007). Precise targeting of consumers is not possible
in mass media such as print and television. Whereas by using the Internet
as a source of advertisements, people who are interested in a particular
product can be drawn towards the company more easily.

As mentioned before, this is called as a pull strategy as opposed to a push

strategy. Even within the traditional media of advertising, premium print
advertisements which are far more expensive than normal advertisements
are being widely used. “More prestigious perception of an advertising
stimulus converges with the advertised brand, thereby leading premium-
print advertisements to be perceived more prestigiously” (Hampel, 2012).

According to Hill & Moran (2012) the interactive nature of social media is
the factor which draws a large number of people towards it as compared
to the traditional media such as TV, radio and print media. Social media is
more customisable as compared to traditional media. In social media, it is
easy to find what a consumer needs. Contrastingly, in case of traditional
media, the consumer is forced to enjoy whatever is broadcasted by
someone else. Social media makes it easier to search for relevant
information thereby cutting down the time, energy and money required to
search for it.

Above all man being a social animal is on the constant outlook towards
interacting with other people around him. Traditional media does not give
an opportunity for this whereas social media was actually built for this
purpose in the first place. Though there are some downsides to social
media marketing such as privacy concern, legal concern and over exposure

32
towards public, these limitations can be overcome if social media is used
promptly, wisely and effectively. Thus social media is by any chance better
than traditional media in terms of expense, wider appeal and lesser
indirect costs

SURVEY ON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

BACKGROUND
This report presents selected results from the Social Media Management
Survey for the Kwalitybazaar.com. The survey collected perception
towards the social media marketing from a representative sample of
management students studying in different departments of Amity
University, Uttar Pradesh. Survey methods included online questionnaire
to collect student’s perception towards the social media marketing. All
data collection activities conformed to standard procedures for conducting
online marketing surveys. The sampling, survey design, and reporting
methodologies are recognized by marketing manager of
Kwalitybazaar.com.

33
SURVEY OBJECTIVE
Social media marketing survey objective was to provide consumer
behaviour data for Kwalitybazaar.com. The resulting databases will be
used to update and expand the marketing activities on social media by the
organisation. In order to achieve the desired results, the social media
marketing survey had the following goals:

 Capture random students from the management courses within the

Amity University, Uttar Pradesh.
 Collect perception of all persons towards marketing through social
media.
 Collect data on which social networking site is more suitable for
marketing.

RESPONSES
1. Do you think social media is the most sought after method adopted
by entrepreneurs’ young and old in the field of marketing,
advertising, brand building, promotions?

NO
10%

YES
90%

34
 Options Number of Responses Percentage
Yes 81 90%

No 9 10%

Social media has taken over the world in every sense. In the field of
marketing , advertising brand building , promotions social media is the
most sought after method adopted by entrepreneurs young and old.

90% people agree with it but 10% of them still believe in the traditional
way of marketing.

2. Which is the most effective for brand promotion?

Column1

Print Media
27%

Social Media
73%

35
 Options Number of responses Percentage
Social Media 66 73%
Print Media 24 27%

Marie Swift (2006) suggests that placing an advertisement in the

print media is not the best solution for brand promotion. The
problem with traditional mass advertising according to Marie is that,
these media appeal to a wide range of people who may not even be
interested to know who we are. 73% of the people agree with it
while rest is still thinking print media has its own significances.
Someone said “print media is the only media which has the highest
reach as it is read by the old and young population.”

3. Do you think social media marketing will help the firms to find their
potential customers?

36
 Column1

20%

May be
No
10% Yes

70%

Options Number of Responses Percentage

Yes 63 70%
No 9 10%
May Be 18 20%

Promotions and brand building must be done with people whom we think are
potential customers for our business. This can be achieved by channelizing a greater
part of promotion and advertising budget for activities such as networking,
volunteering, hosting events and so on. Out of these methods, networking is the best
that suits the need of the time (Marie Swift, 2006). With the technological
advancements in today’s world, it is fairly easy to be connected with the outside
world with the help of social networking sites. Yes, most of the people agree with it.

4. Which social networking site are you most familiar with?

37
 Column1
My Space
Most of the above 2%
16%
LinkedIn
41%
Youtube
10%

Twitter Facebook
14% 17%

Options Number of responses percentage

LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
My space
Most of the above

In today’s world there are many social networking sites which are helpful for the
mass marketing. The objective of this question was to find the website which is the
most popular one. Most of the people are familiar with Facebook, LinkedIn then
YouTube. Many of them are familiar with most of the social networking sites.

38
5. Do you think the relative cost is much lesser as compared with
traditional advertising?

Depends
17%

Yes
56%
No
27%

39
6. Is social media helpful for B2B firms in generating new sales/clients?

Yes NO Depends how reputed the firm is

29%

64%
8%

40
7. “Social media can be effectively used for various B2C clients to increase
sales.” Do you agree?

Partially
20%

No
10%

Yes
70%

Options Number of Responses Percentage

Yes 63 70%
No 9 10%
Partially 18 20%

70% of the people agree with this because most of the people are familiar with social
networking sites and they frequently visit these sites.

41
8. Which one do you think is the most effective social networking site for
online marketing?

Column1

Twitter
10%

Facebook
29%
LinkedIn
61%

Options Number of Responses Percentage

Twitter 21 21%
Facebook 60 67%
LinkedIn 9 10%

It shows that most of the people are familiar with Facebook in

comparison with other sites like Twitter and LinkedIn. Cab providers
like Ola Cabs and Taxi For Sure are more active in Twitter than
Facebook. So it depends on different industries.

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 9. Do you follow your favourite brands on social networking sites
like Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn?

Column1

No
13%

Yes
87%

Options Number of Responses Percentage

Yes 78 87%
No 12 13%

Most of the people do follow their favourite brands in Facebook and

twitter to know about their offerings and all.

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 10. If yes, why do you follow them?

To Know about well they are in marketing

16%
Just because you like these brands
27%

You are very keen to know about their new offerings

57%

Options Number of responses Percentage

Just because you like 24 27%
those brands

You are very keen to 51 57%

know about their new
offerings

To know how well they 15 16%

are in marketing.

27% of people follow their favourite brands just because you like
those brands. 57% are very keen to know about their new offerings
while 17% follow to know how well the Marketing.

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3.6 STP AND SWOT ANALYSIS

Kwalitybazaar.com Brand: GREENO

Category: Retail (Online)
Sector: Daily need products
Tagline: Eat Healthy – Stay Fit
USP: Affordable daily needs.

STP (Segment, Target group, Positioning)

Segment: Price sensitive group
Target Group: Upper and lower middle class
Positioning: Working Women.

SWOT
Strength
 Ozone purified fruits and vegetables with brand GREENO.
 Free home delivery.
 Cash on delivery. (COD)
 Affordability for middle class.
 Quality, choice and convenience.

Weakness

 Not known nationally and restricted to limited areas.

 No promotional offers.
 Less promotional activities.
 First impression is website for an online store, so we have to
improve the interface of it.

Opportunity
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  To expand nationwide by tie-ups.
 Entering into high premium segments.
 Adding more products through diversification.
 To penetrate the market with affordable price and promotional
offers.
 Opening offline stores. (OSTs).

Threats

 Nationwide presence of competitors.

 Frequent variations in the price.
 The facilities used to provide by the players like ‘FRESHONE’.
(Ex: Weekly payment method)
 Kent’s Ozone fruits and vegetables purifier, and ‘VegFru wash’.

COMPETITORS

 Buysubzi.com
 Freshsubzi.com
 Freshone.com
 Freshveggy.com
 Shope.naturebasket.co.in (by Godrej)
 Myeazylife.com
 Tolbazaar.com
 Mangoshopper.com and many.

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 CHAPTER - 4

47
 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

4.1 CONCLUSIONS
Social media is working more as a search engine these days because
people trust people rather trusting companies. Also people think that
it would be cheaper to buy from the people directly rather than
going to the company website. Hence, an area of interest is searched
on a social media and concerned people are found and
communicated with. Social media marketing creates a positive effect
on many business markets such as financial institutions, travel and
tourism businesses, retail businesses, knowledge businesses,
entertainment industry, and so on. Since the process of social media
marketing saves money, time and is highly engaging and interesting
social media marketing seems to be the next big thing to hit the
world as a whole.

One of the biggest advantages of social media marketing as opposed

to traditional advertising is that potential customers can be precisely
targeted. For example, in Facebook, if a person species that his area
of interest is interior designing; his home page would have
advertisements of interior designers on it. Thus, it doesn’t seem to
be a hassle for the customer because they would definitely want to
see those advertisements. As for the business owner, he/she needs
to pay only if a person clicks on his/her advertisements. Thus it is a
winwin situation for both the business owner and the customer.
Similarly small business start-ups should utilize the endless
opportunities provided by social media sites such as Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn. The biggest advantage for small business start-
ups is that the amount of money to be spent on advertisements can
be massively cut down and brand building can be done effectively. As

48
 in LinkedIn which is customisable, more than one products being sold
by the same company can also be marketed. This works perfectly for
B2B clients who cater to more than one product from the same
verticals.

In fact social media sites themselves are changing at a fast pace to

keep up with the marketing trend that is present today. Though
LinkedIn was started for professional networking, it has added much
functionality recently which makes it an attractive platform for
business development. Likewise although Facebook is considered as
a medium for personal space, it is changing at a rapid pace to cater
to the needs of businesses as well. More companies are trying to
market their products through Facebook. Twitter is least preferred

social networking website used for business development. The main

reason for this is that Twitter is more demanding in terms of
frequent tweets and more time should be spent on it to respond to
customer queries. However, Twitter is also changing to cater to
business development needs. Marketing Week (2012) reports that
Twitter now provides various tools for gauging the impact of
promoted tweets. Now brands who want to advertise on Twitter can
customise their advertisements on the basis of what is working for
them. Thus all popular sites are into marketing and it can be seen as
a good sign of opening the horizons for a new way of marketing
which cheaper, greener and more effective.

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 4.2 RECOMMENDATIONS

From this report it can be concluded that social media presence is

inevitable in the coming years. Not only that social media is useful as
a marketing tool, it has become the order of the day to be present in
social media. Therefore this report recommends all kind of
businesses- small scale, large scale, business to business clients,
business to consumer clients, manufacturing industries and so on to
be actively present in the social media. An important fact to be kept
in mind in this context is that most social networking sites have a
cyclic growth. It starts from minimum, attains a maximum and goes
down to a minimum again. Thus, this is the perfect time to invest
time and resource in popular social media sites such as Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn. Owing to the relatively small amount of
investment, it is not a high risk investment as the usage of social
media will come to a minimum only gradually.
In comparison with traditional advertisements, social media
marketing caters to a more focussed group of people and thus can
yield better results. This does not mean that companies should stop
using traditional media and start using online and social media alone
for advertisements. This may result in disastrous results. An
important thing to be kept in mind is that when we say one in every
seven people are on Facebook, there can be millions of duplicate
accounts and almost half of the total number of accounts is not
being accessed every day. This limits the chances of meeting new
prospects and thereby causes a hindrance for generating new
business leads. Also still the remaining people of the world are
relying on traditional media which means that we can’t ignore them.
Therefore the best solution is to combine both traditional and social
media for marketing (Wakolbinger, 2009). This will bridge the gap
between those people who are active on social media sites and those
50
 who are still relying on traditional media. Companies must be careful
in selecting particular adverts for particular media. A company which
sells clothes may have to rely on social media for advertising their
clothes for people of the age group 15-50 whereas they still have to
depend upon traditional advertisements like TV, radio and print
media for the rest of the age group population. Thus effective
combination of social media adverts and traditional adverts will
result in better results.

The online presence of firms must be frequently updated and it

must be linked with each other and with the company website. It
must be maintained well and only relevant posts must be updated.
Small businesses should embrace this wonderful technology and
reap the benefits of being on the social media for marketing.

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 ANNEXURE

QUESTIONAIRE

1. Do you think social media is the most sought after method

adopted by entrepreneurs’ young and old in the field of marketing,
advertising, brand building, promotions?
 Yes
 No

2.Which is the most effective solution for brand promotion?

 Social Media
 Print Media

3. Do you think social media marketing will help the firms to find
their potential customers?
 Yes
 No
 Maybe

4. Which social networking site are you most familiar with? #

LinkedIn # Twitter # My space
 Facebook
 YouTube
 Most of the above

52
5. Do you think the relative cost is much lesser as compared with
traditional advertising?

 Yes
 No
 Depends

6. Is social media helpful for B2B firms in generating new

sales/clients?
 Yes
 No
 It depends how reputed the firm is.

7. “Social media can be effectively used for various B2C clients to

increase sales.” Do you agree?
 Yes
 No
 Partially

8. Which one do you think is the most effective social networking site
for online marketing?
 Twitter
 Facebook
 LinkedIn

9. Do you follow your favourite brands on social networking sites

like Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn?
 Yes
 No

53
 10. If yes, why do you follow them?
 Just because you like that brands
 You are very keen to know about their new offerings
 To know how good they are in marketing

54